MOSCOW, January 22. /TASS/. The breakdown of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program, as well as failure on other international agreements will inevitably entail a turmoil in international affairs, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Kommersant daily on Sunday.
"If international deals agreed by the leading countries on this or that conflict are broken down, it may entail a mishmash when everyone is for himself. It will be very sad," he stressed. "I think it is unacceptable, be it Iran, Syria, Libya, Yemen, the Korean Peninsula, which also had an agreement of 2005 committing to paper what North Korea and others must do. A couple of weeks after it was signed, the Americans ‘dug out’ an old story about some account in a Macau bank and used it as pretext to arrest North Korean account."
According to the Russian top diplomat, debates about the legitimacy of this step may never end. "But the fact is that there was an agreement to stop confrontation and any provocative actions. It did not work," he noted. "The biggest problem now is the ability to negotiate."
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the deal on Iran’s nuclear program, was signed between Iran and six international mediators (the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Russia, the United States, and France) on July 14, 2015. On January 16, 2016, the parties to the deal announced beginning of its implementation. Under the deal, Iran undertakes to curb its nuclear activities and place them under total control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange of abandonment of the sanctions imposed previously by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union and the United States over its nuclear program.
Last week, Trump said his country would withdraw from the JCPOA if changes were not brought into it. In his words, he was "waiving the application of certain nuclear sanctions, but only in order to secure our European allies’ agreement to fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal.".